10 ms·

The Last Children of Down Syndrome

• michaelsbradley 6y ago
  Special attention must be given to evaluating the morality of prenatal diagnostic techniques which enable the early detection of possible anomalies in the unborn child. In view of the complexity of these techniques, an accurate and systematic moral judgment is necessary. When they do not involve disproportionate risks for the child and the mother, and are meant to make possible early therapy or even to favour a serene and informed acceptance of the child not yet born, these techniques are morally licit. But since the possibilities of prenatal therapy are today still limited, it not infrequently happens that these techniques are used with a eugenic intention which accepts selective abortion in order to prevent the birth of children affected by various types of anomalies. Such an attitude is shameful and utterly reprehensible, since it presumes to measure the value of a human life only within the parameters of "normality" and physical well-being, thus opening the way to legitimizing infanticide and euthanasia as well. And yet the courage and the serenity with which so many of our brothers and sisters suffering from serious disabilities lead their lives when they are shown acceptance and love bears eloquent witness to what gives authentic value to life, and makes it, even in difficult conditions, something precious for them and for others. — John Paul II, Evangelium Vitae, 63 http://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_25031995_evangelium-vitae.html http://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/do...
  • alangibson 6y ago
    I hope I'm not following the argument, because it sounds like he thinks we should have other people around 'suffering with serious disabilities' so we can be reminded how precious life is. If so, that's cruel to the point of perversity.
    • xupybd 6y ago
      It's saying that if we terminate base on a disability we are preventing that person from a chance a life based on the assumption that it would be better not to exist rather than have the disability in question. Those born with these disabilities might disagree and they might see such an action as a judgement against their own existence. This further adds to their suffering.
      • Fumtumi 6y ago
        Only if you assume its relevant. Its not relevant when your society defines abortion before 3 month okay, which plenty do and i agree with. If we would see it different, than it would be murder.
      • jlokier 6y ago
        This other comment throws up an interesting twist on that: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25140048 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25140048 Once we are talking about counterfactuals, that is things like "would haves" about people who don't exist but could have, it opens the door to considering other people who don't exist but could have. Under the assumption that a family who proceeds with the Downs foetus to birth has fewer children afterwards, ought we not to consider the later children who might not exist as part of this moral equation too? What if a family who proceeds with the Downs foetus to birth is likely to have multiple fewer children after than they would have had? Some people born with disabilities might disagree - and have every right to disagree - and see the action of abortion as a judgement against their own existence. But in doing so, are they not identifying themselves more with the counterfactual Downs foetus than with the counterfactual non-Downs foetus? If so, does that not suggest people who think that way identify themselves with the disability to some degree ("In that world I would have been aborted"), rather than identifying themselves as people independent of a physical characteristic ("In that world I would have been guaranteed my body would not have this disability")?
    • gowld 6y ago
      He thinks that we should treasure all life as precious, not only the healthiest and strongest.
  • gambiting 6y ago
    Ah yes, the pope that as now comes to light has protected pedophiles in the church for decades. Really the authority we should all look up to.
    • scop 6y ago
      (1) JPII was one of the great moral thinkers of the 20th century and I highly recommend that you read some of his work. Not only a thinker, he may be the single man most responsible for the fall of the USSR. (2) The human institution of the Church, especially where wealthy, is highly corrupt and I say that as a devout Catholic who believes Christ established the Catholic Church as His church (tldr the human & divine Church are separate things). (3) One of the likely reasons that Benedict abdicated was that he did not want to be "taken advantage of" as he saw various Vatican higher-ups do with the aging and frail JPII. (4) JPII sadly dismissed cases of allegations. One thing to keep in mind though is when he was growing up in Nazi and then Soviet occupied Poland he would see the occupying forces falsely accuse "resistance" figures of abuse in order to hobble their reputation. (5) While JPII did make mistakes, it is also my belief that many Vatican figures still-living use him as a scapegoat to hide their own errors. They are doing their best to hide any and all investigation and purely say "this is the fault of people who are now dead." They do not want any oversight. For example, why did they choose to finally release the long-awaited report on Cardinal McCarrick, the most prominent US abuser, the week of the presidential election in the US? Aiming to have it buried!
      • gambiting 6y ago
        I'm Polish, for the entirety of my childhood and teenage years the man was revered more than Jesus himself. In Poland he's beyond Saint, you can't speak ill of him. And yes, I'm aware of his contribution to the fall of communism and fall of communism in Poland in particular - his election as a Pole was specifically designed to achieve that goal after all, communist government really didn't know what to do about it and it strengthened the Polish church to such an incredible force they became completely untouchable and yes, could be seen as the leading reason for the eventual fall of communism. However. Despite the early life reverence, I feel that as a grown adult I do now see him in a completely different light - as a man put into a certain role which he has played correctly, and ultimately he has protected an institution that sheltered abusers, corruption, wealth and which ultimately is a cancer spreading over Poland right now, destroying the society from within. Also not everything is about US - look what's happening in Poland with cardinal Dziwisz, the closest confidant of the pope - I always suspected he was a piece of shit after disobeying the direct testament of JP2 and making money off of it, but now it's been confirmed he's much much worse than just profiteering off a dead pope.
  • bdamm 6y ago
    Yet this attitude rarely comes with systemic care for those born with handicaps, so actually it is a form of classist cruelty. There is no shortage of suffering, we don't need to choose to create more.
    • jlkuester7 6y ago
      Yeah, because the Catholic Church never did anything to help folks that are handicapped, sick, or poor.... > Next to the federal government, Catholic Charities is the largest US social-safety-net provider. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Charities_USA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Charities_USA
      • bdamm 6y ago
        Do you really want to do tennis with how much good/bad the catholic church has done? Good that they provide some hospitals, but not a replacement for good government policy.
        • jlkuester7 6y ago
          Lol wut? Nobody is trying to go all John Stewart Mill here. Just observing that there are reasons to question the assertion that people who agree with JPII don't care about the sick, poor, and handicapped.... SMH
  • andrepd 6y ago
    It's a valid perspective, so I think the downvotes aren't in order. However I strongly disagree. Having Down syndrome isn't just being "outside the conventional parameters of of normality", it's a serious disease with life-altering implications. You will never surpass the cognitive capacity of a young child, you will have impaired vision and hearing, if you ever manage to speak at all, you will probably lose that ability at around 30 years of age. You will have a myriad other chronic and painful health problems, and then you will finally die at around age 40 (maybe more with enough high-quality support). This is not a life worth living, if I ever were in such a situation I would pray to be euthanised.
    • lazyasciiart 6y ago
      That sounds like a pretty severe expression of it, I don't know the distribution but I know people who don't have these limits.
    • GordonS 6y ago
      I'm afraid a lot of what you've said here is simply not true - it's either wofully outdated, or pure disinformation. Attitudes to Down's have changed a lot in recent decades, and children now get access to education and assistance, instead of being stuck in an institution to rot. As such, life outcomes are vastly different to what they used to be. I have a daughter with Down's, so I probably know more about it that most. > You will never surpass the cognitive capacity of a young child This is just completely untrue. > you will have impaired vision and hearing There is certainly a higher incidence of vision and hearing problems in people with Down's, but it's far from guaranteed. Further more, glasses and hearing aids are a thing. > if you ever manage to speak at all I'm struggling to take you seriously now - this is utterly absurd. > You will have a myriad other chronic and painful health problems There is a higher incidence of some physical and mental illnesses in people with Down's, but again, it's far from guaranteed, and again need not have a large impact. For example, a lot of those born with Down's have a small hole in their heart, but nowadays it's fairly easily rectified. Not sure what "painful" health problems you could be referring to.
    • highland586 6y ago
      While it is a serious condition, most of your statements are simply not true. Life expectancy for Down syndrome is around 55 - 60 years old. I have a family member with Down's who is around 60 years old at the moment and despite his health issues, he is one of the happiest individuals I know. Not saying this goes for all afflicted people, but a blanket statement like 'not a life worth living' is just plain BS.
  • Tronno 6y ago
    This may be controversial, but I don't believe an unborn fetus has any inherent value outside of whatever feelings of hope and excitement it elicits in the parents. If those feelings are instead of dread and anguish, it should be terminated for the benefit of all. The quote seems to imply there is value in the suffering of a disabled child and its parents - suffering for its own sake - which is absolutely horrific.
    • drno123 6y ago
      And yet, people with Down’s syndrome are more happy than average person, so we cannot say that they suffer, and aborting baby with Down’s syndrome does not prevent baby suffering. I know that people with Down’s are more susceptible to certain illnesses but even with that they are happy. Source: my sister worked with peoplw with Downs.
    • jlkuester7 6y ago
      > The quote seems to imply there is value in the suffering of a disabled child and its parents - suffering for its own sake - which is absolutely horrific. I think it would be more accurate to say that the quote is asserting that human life has great value _regardless_ of the amount of suffering involved. (Or put another way, the total value of someone's life is not a function of the amount of suffering they experience.) Certainly this is a challenging worldview since naturally everyone wants to avoid suffering (or at least avoid suffering that does not help them achieve some goal). But at the same time it is hard to make the general assertion that people who have suffered greatly would have been better of not existing. I am reminded of the story about Johannes Steinhoff [1], a German fighter pilot in WWII. Apparently after witnessing another pilot die horribly in a fire, he asked his friend to just kill him quickly if he ever ended up in a similar situation. As it turns out, Johannes was later a victim of a terrible explosion (even his eyelids were burned off). His friend literally drove to the hospital to shoot him and put him out of his misery, but was prevented from doing so by the medical staff. Johannes ended up recovering and went on to become a key player in the post-war German Air Force and the German Military Representative to the NATO Military Committee. I don't quite know what to think of this story because on one hand I would not wish his ordeal on my worst enemy. But, on the other hand, it is hard to say that anyone would have been "better off" if his friend had killed him. Life is often what we choose to make of it and it is impossible to avoid all suffering. It seems like the best we can do is play the hand that we are dealt and try to regard all things outside of our control with equanimity. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_Steinhoff https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_Steinhoff
• scop 6y ago
  Kyrie eleison
  • recursivedoubts 6y ago
    Christe eleison
    • drno123 6y ago
      kyrie eleison
• renewiltord 6y ago
  Hmm, so the testing isn't high sensitivity? It appears that the initial couple had the foetus tested and then did not abort but found that they had a child with Down Syndrome in the end. Interesting.
  • sgt101 6y ago
    I think that there are two tests. First there is a non invasive test that can be done to evaluate if the foetus is "at risk" of Downs. Then there is a sampling one that is very specific. Basically counting the chromosomes. But the catch is that the specific test carries a risk to the pregnancy - so it's not applied without cause. As well as the sensitivity issue in the article there is also a specificity issue. My daughter was tested (non invasively) as at high risk of downs (the doctor said 50/50) we decided we didn't care... lo and behold: she doesn't have downs. I don't know enough about the area to make judgements, but I am definitely concerned that it's not a slamdunk that the doctors are getting this right. There is a huge agenda of control around pregnancy in the UK - our consultant was so arsey about us not doing the follow-up that I had to get him changed out (it later turned out that he was struck off 2 years later for more or less murdering a woman and child, but that's another story).
    • zbyte64 6y ago
      I think part of it is if you want a genetic sample you have to puncture the amniotic sack, which can cause complications.
    • GordonS 6y ago
      There is a newer type of test, only very briefly mentioned in the article, and strangely not even by name: NIPT (Non-Invasive Prenatal Testing). It works by testing tiny amounts of the baby's DNA that can be found in the mother's blood. It is close to 100% effective for detecting Down's Syndrome. It needs only a blood sample, so carries no meaningful risk for mother or fetus, but it's more expensive than the older amnio or sampling methods, so is usually only available privately (at least in the UK).
      • 6y ago
• chmod775 6y ago
  Prenatal testing is one of the few solutions to this "post-darwinian" world (not in the usual sense of the word) with its modern medicine that will result in mankind accumulating more and more genetic defects. Though slightly more ethical from my point of view would be gene-editing to remove those defects, instead of just terminating the fetus. Edit: Also I'm not talking about down syndrome specifically. There's a long list of genetic defects that modern medicine can correct for and thus removes evolutionary pressure (bad eyesight, allergies, etc.)
  • nivenkos 6y ago
    > will result in mankind accumulating more and more genetic defects Why? Unless the Down Syndrome patients themselves have children, then there wouldn't be an evolutionary impact.
    • chmod775 6y ago
      Are you planning to make laws that will make it illegal for people with genetic defects to procreate? Seriously?
      • lazyasciiart 6y ago
        That seems like a big jump from what they actually said.
      • inglor_cz 6y ago
        You are probably not aware of the fact that majority of Down sufferers cannot procreate. There is only a few recorded instances of Down sufferers having children. That said, you can have mosaic aneuploidy (just some cells are affected), in that case, your life is likely to be more typical.
    • raunakdag 6y ago
      Why wouldn’t the Down Syndrome patients themselves have children?
• pbcoronel 6y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKhrJLvt-YM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKhrJLvt-YM
• mmastrac 6y ago
  Having a child is terrifying enough. Some folks might be up for the challenge of supporting a child with special needs for their entire life (or a good chunk of it), but I'm not afraid to say that it was a huge relief to know that my son had no known genetic abnormalities before he was born. There's nothing to be ashamed of here.
  • Red_Leaves_Flyy 6y ago
    Seriously. I've seen several families destroyed by the challenges involved in raising children with special needs, or rare diseases. Having a nuero/genetically-typical child is a challenging full time job. Add in the prospect of it being a full triple-time job for their entire life, whether that's six years or 130 years and it's not likely to be remotely possible for the vast majority of families to sustain. Between the mandatory extra time commitments, lost pay, increased expenses, and the conversation changes. How could it not?
    • mordechai9000 6y ago
      I had a coworker with a child with severe cerebral palsy, and the evident strain on him and his family was enormous. I couldn't believe they were effectively thrown on their own resources. I came to the opinion that people in that situation deserve all the help society can give them, including caregivers and even special living situations. Anyone who has children runs that risk. And society needs children, unless you believe the human race should let itself die out.
  • GordonS 6y ago
    I have a daughter with Down's (we didn't know during pregnancy - actually, we didn't find out until she was almost 2!!), and my wife got NIPT tests on subsequent pregnancies. I don't know what we'd have done had either of them been positive, but at the very least we wanted to know beforehand. Like you said, there's nothing to be ashamed of here.
    • mmastrac 6y ago
      > actually, we didn't find out until she was almost 2 I'm curious about this. I didn't realize that the condition could go undiagnosed long after birth!
• tristor 6y ago
  > Yet a gulf seems to separate the publicly expressed attitudes and private decisions. I would be more surprised if this were not true. It's not very PC to say, but quite simply being different is not inherently a moral good. Downs Syndrome in particular is more controversial, because people who have this disorder typically are happy in their lives. I've spent a not insignificant part of my life working with teenagers and adults with Downs Syndrome as a volunteer, and all of the people I've worked with have been cheerful and generally seem to have a high enjoyment factor in their lives. On the flip side, all of them required life-long assistance and care, never able to function completely independently, and lacking in almost all other meaningful quality of life factors. It is entirely possible, without any dissonance whatsoever, to respect the autonomy and wonder of human life and the rights of people with disabilities, while also understanding that having children with debilitating permanent disabilities can be a heartbreaking exercise that drains you emotionally, mentally, and physically. Nobody reasonable wishes for their child to suffer from such a disability, so the moral implications of the shift towards prenatal screening and following abortion are more about the abortion than the rest of the conversation. Denmark, in particular, has a very open social view towards abortion, so the fact that abortion rates are so high when negative screening occurs is unsurprising. I'm sure the result would differ in other countries in proportion roughly to their social views on abortion.
  • gowld 6y ago
    > meaningful quality of life factors. What are these?
    • andrepd 6y ago
      Everything, from cognitive ability, to chronic health problems in vision, hearing, heart, diabetes, etc. And of course, the immense weight on caretakers.
    • tristor 6y ago
      It depends entirely on the person what sort of effects Downs Syndrome will have on their life. Some people born with Downs Syndrome have fairly mild intellectual disability and so are capable of basic life independence and holding down menial jobs, however many people will have moderate to severe intellectual disability and be completely incapable of living independently at any point in their life. I think many people don't understand the depth of that statement, "living independently" isn't just a matter of financial independence. Certainly there is a place where society could help to fund the living expenses of the severely disabled. What I mean is that many people with Downs Syndrome are unable to perform basic tasks of life without assistance, such as maintaining their living space, cooking for themselves, being able to get to a doctor's appointment on time, being able to pay bills. Note, I don't mean forgetting to pay bills, which can be resolved through assistive technology, I mean being unable to follow the process to actually make a payment. The life expectancy of people with Downs Syndrome has become quite good, and is around 60 years of age now, and yet for many of these people they will never know a moment of true independence and agency in their entire lives. They will need a permanent, likely live-in, caretaker from birth until death, long after their parents have passed away. One unfortunate reality is a prenatal test can't tell you how severe the disorder might be. Your child-to-be could end up being one of the kids with Downs Syndrome who effectively has some physical abnormalities which can be accommodated and is a little slower at learning, but could otherwise graduate college and live a normal life. Or they could end up being one of the many children with Downs Syndrome that suffers from a deeper intellectual disability. IQ is one of those things that's mostly meaningless, but on the extremes it matters. The average IQ for adults with Downs Syndrome is 50, meaning that for most people with this disorder they will never get beyond the intellectual capacities of a small child. Some, unfortunately, are mostly non-verbal and unable to carry on conversation. I don't think I should be any more specific than that, because it wouldn't be fair to the privacy of the people I've volunteered with. If you're legitimately curious, I'd encourage you to just search online. There's a lot of information about Downs Syndrome care out there.
• gadders 6y ago
  I think there is a certain tension between on the one hand being against children being aborted for downs syndrome, but being OK with children with no detected abnormalities being aborted for lifestyle/career reasons.
  • lazyasciiart 6y ago
    There are many many examples of choices that it's OK to make unless it's for a bad reason - that's exactly what a protected class is about.
    • gadders 6y ago
      Such as?
      • lazyasciiart 6y ago
        Hiring, firing, promoting, renting, selling to, buying from....
  • Fumtumi 6y ago
    At least not in germany. Are extreme religous people okay with any abortion? Then there is no tension for them either and as far as i know, those are the more/real prominent examples of groups who saying something about this topic at all
• secabeen 6y ago
  The families that I know that have chosen to abort a fetus with Down's syndrome have all gone on to have additional children. Although we can't say for sure, had those families chosen not to abort, those additional children may not have been conceived or born. It seems somewhat contradictory to put a huge value on the potential life of an unborn fetus with Down's while not recognizing the second-order effects on those potential lives.
• pdeuchler 6y ago
  This is not a new philosophical problem. We already know what the inherent tension is here. Do we value the sanctity of a human life over the greater social order? Of course both answers to that question have very far reaching implications, and to answer one way or another almost always reveals oneself to be a hypocrite in some way. But instead of actually engaging with these hard questions we equivocate and try to build logical defenses that allow us to have our cake and eat it too. Unfortunately with modern science and medicine we will be forced to reckon with the consequences of these unspoken choices soon or later. I don't pretend to know what is correct here, and I don't necessarily pass judgement on those who would answer these questions differently than I, but I do have large amounts of contempt for anyone who tries to ignore the realities of their positions and even more contempt for those who think the answer is obvious and self explanatory.
• inglor_cz 6y ago
  This is personal for me, we are just undergoing IVF treatment. We opted to have all embryos biopsied and checked for aneuploidies (Down Syndrome is a form of aneuploidy). Sure enough, some were aneuploid, though almost certainly non-viable. I could not, in good faith, deliberately bring a child with Down syndrome to this world. Just could not.
  • mmastrac 6y ago
    Same here. And nothing wrong with that choice at all. Others are free to plan their families as they please.
• bennettfeely 6y ago
  They mention it in the article but we should really be calling this what it really is, 21st century eugenics. It's not "changing who gets born and who doesn’t", it's killing the weak, the unwanted, the vulnerable. It's saying that our lives have meaning and worth and dignity only so long as we are wanted and not a burden to others. Few minds and opinions change on HN but I encourage anyone viewing this as a positive development of society to meet someone with down syndrome in person and ask if that person would be better off killed.
  • gadders 6y ago
    Are you against abortion in general, or just for people with Downs?
  • mmastrac 6y ago
    Consider the parent that you are forcing to raise a child that requires a significant amount of work. It's better to have wanted children. Unwanted children will suffer in different ways.
  • Fumtumi 6y ago
    'killed'. Abortion is not killing. Our society defines it as okay. You apparently don't agree with this but you are not the majority here. No human aborts a fetus for fun. My wife and i lost our 'fetus' on the 3 month mark. There have been a lot of thoughts about this experience and lots of emotions. And i would probably abort a fetus with Down Syndrom. No one is doing an abortion easy. It is never easy for whatever reason and its not your place to criticize it when its not your responsibility. You have to understand one thing: People are able to seperate the wish of not having a kid with down syndrom from other human beings who have down syndrom.
    • Damorian 6y ago
      Posts like this confuse me. It is absolutely killing a human. This is a scientific fact. The moral question is whether or not they are a person, or otherwise, whether or not they deserve rights, at various points of development, and apparently, any medical conditions they have or may have in the future, based on probabilities from current medical research.
• chub500 6y ago
  My parents were manipulated into having prenatal disability tests because of my mom's low amniotic fluid during my sister's pregnancy. Tests came back positive and the doctors recommended abortion. My parents were horrified, being pro-life. They endured a traumatic next few months and a premature delivery. That was 1989. My sister was fine but it left my parents with enduring resentment of doctors to this day. My abortion "policy" has been that it should be illegal to knowingly put an unborn fetus in jeopardy (unless the mother's life is at risk of course) as soon as the pregnancy is known beyond reasonable doubt. I can't imagine any other policy that doesn't dance with eugenics. I think that the government's prerogative should be facilitating adoption for the baby and mitigating the "unavoidable" inequity to the mother biology has put upon her. I understand many disagree with the above, I only ask that you keep an open mind as I also try to do about one of the trickiest moral quandaries in the present age.
  • Damorian 6y ago
    This is what frustrates me as well. I know two people who were told that their children will have down syndrome with almost complete certainty, and their kids ended up completely fine, at least in this regard. We're on our third child and the screening and push to make a decision is at every appointment. On our first pregnancy, after the first ultrasound the doctor told us there was a "roughly 10%" chance she had down syndrome and asked us what we wanted to do. As if I'm going to kill my kid over a slim chance at disability determined by a grainy picture from a 10+ year old ultrasound machine operated by someone just trying to make it to their lunch break. I can't help but wonder how many parents terminate perfectly healthy children.
  • hi41 6y ago
    I know of at least two families who got told by the doctor that they have to abort the fetus because if the Down syndrome test. Is there a financial benefit to the doctor? Why would they keep pressing on that? The baby was born okay.
  • orwin 6y ago
    Doesn't low amniotic fluid result in premature delivery in anycase? The doctor will try to help you make it to 35 weeks but its often not possible. Also if i remember correctly, Doctors try to add amniotic fluid during delivery to avoid complication for the mother and the children (else it can be bloody and infection-prone). Also, maybe i agree on principle that abortion should be a terrible choice (i've have not thought this through yet), but a lot of my friends or close family are educators/youth counselors (i have been one myself in another life) and even with a big social security net (unlike the US), some lives are just so unbelievably sad i sometime think we should tests the parent before allowing them to have a child. I'm joking, but some days, not really. To put the pro-life choice into perspective, of the 4 girls present in the "foyer" i was working at ten years ago (google translate give me reception center or youth club, its an orphanage for 11yo+), the only one still alive was blowing guys in the toilets since she was 12. At least she was proactive and asked money for it. The other 3 died, one suicide at 14, the other two "accident" between 17 and 19 yo (they did not leave a note). I only have new from one of the 30 guys i was trying to help at the time, he is still living in the street at 23yo, my mother just got him to do the paperwork to get a social security card and taught him how to use the formation center locals to cook for himself, so i guess he is making steps, but he was one of those we had hope for when he was 14, so knowing he is in the street since he is 18 make me feel like a failure. I'm pretty sure nobody really wants to know those exist, know their past, their mothers, fathers or stepfathers, but still, they exist. I can't be pro-life when i've seen them suffer, seen them kill themselves, either literally or with drugs. Or not being able to live at all. I've seen a boy with no autism, aged 6, act like a 3yo around noon and bedtime and having a lot of issue with urinating and defecating (i was specialized 3-6). Asked the director why. If this kid manage to pass the mental trauma his father inflicted him, the physical damages will stay with him for the rest of his life. Some people should never, ever be parents. The killing of foetus is inconsequential until we've fixed how we take care of our children. Or maybe sterilizing people is the way to go.
• tosseuthansia 6y ago
  I find it fascinating how many comments argue that these lives aren't worth living in a forum that just a few days ago had a (albeit unscientific) poll that said that most of you are currently depressed. 55-45 when I checked it. I was surprised it wasn't higher. This despite being a population that largely skews young, educated, healthy, high earning, highly sought after. We hold the power to insist that ours are the "Good Values". We are the beautiful people Marlyn Manson sung about. And yet, a set of people who are largely unappreciative of the value of their own lives, are passing judgement the lives of the disabled. Why do you think their lives aren't worth living?
  • matchbok 6y ago
    That’s not what anybody is saying. Are you offering to pay for the extra millions in lifetime care and need for those children?
    • tosseuthansia 6y ago
      "That’s not what anybody is saying." Read the comments carefully " Are you offering to pay for the extra millions in lifetime care and need for those children" Where in my comment do I suggest that I wouldn't support the Billions (with a B in the US, you're off by three orders of mag) needed? Yes. I believe that a healthy, just society that has any semblance of a future has a moral obligation towards its needy. Question. Where does your prejudice (i.e. pre-judging) that I wouldn't support extra Billions come from?
• beervirus 6y ago
  Pure eugenics. But it's ok for some reason this time.
• Konohamaru 6y ago
  You didn't cure Down Syndrome, you just killed its victims.